#22 Why Are You So Long And Sweet?: Collected Long Poems by David W. McFadden

Spring 2010 

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A companion volume to Why Are You So Sad? — David W. McFadden's book of selected poems shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize — this book finally brings together, in one place, all of McFadden's masterful long poems, once again selected and edited by Stuart Ross.

For some poets, the long poem is an occasion to stretch one's lyrical legs, try on different stylistic hats, or work out ideas too complex for shorter poems. For David McFadden, the long poem is much more; here is McFadden's prodigious imagination in overdrive, his language always mischievous and mesmerizing, spinning yarns both comic and cosmic.

#21 Wanton by Angela Hibbs

Fall 2009 

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In the first section of Angela Hibbs's second collection, short lyrical poems blur the lines between personal, geographical, and artistic spaces, demonstrating how we blend the intimate details of our lives with the culture we consume — be it modern literature, primetime television, or contemporary art. Here, liminal spaces are not denounced as confusing gray areas, but celebrated as welcome places of pause, ripe with opportunity for fertile mutation.

The second section of the book, a long poem sequence set in the imaginary town of Wanton, is concerned with familial legitimacy from the point of view of adopted children put to work to earn their keep. Absentee fathers and overly-present benefactors haunt the long narrative poem, and the result is something like the bastard child of Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie and Harmony Korine's Gummo. At once sweetly comic and brutally grim, it always manages to assert its oddball characters and misfit emotions with vulnerability and verve.

#20 Naming the Mannequins by Nic Labriola

Spring 2009 

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Naming the Mannequins is an ecstatic journey through the seamy underbelly of a fading, unnamed town populated with seemingly hollow, anonymous souls. Taking place over the span of one night, this series of linked poems gives us glimpses into the lives of unlikely urban saints on their individual quests for personal humanity and spiritual redemption.

Marred by loneliness, violence and desire, Labriola's world, at once lyrical and cinematic, occupies that irresistibly dark place in our cultural consciousness somewhere between film noir, crusade story and the songs of Tom Waits.

#19 Porcupine Archery by Bill Howell

Spring 2009 

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One of the original 'Storm Warning' poets, Bill Howell is now at the height of an award-winning literary career spanning four decades.

He has published three previous collections of poetry, including The Red Fox (1971), In a White Shirt (1982), and Moonlight Saving Time (1990), as well as a recent chapbook Ghost Test Flights. His writing has appeared in literary journals and magazines across the country, in the United Kingdom, and in the United States.

#18 Into the Drowned World by Ryan Kamstra

Fall 2008 

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Into the Drowned World is a visionary work of pop-culture apocrypha, recited by a nodding, benumbed narrator who is perpetually reliving the day before the turn of the millennium. At its heart is Kamstra's breathless, ecstatic response to Madonna's infamous Drowned World Tour of 2001, which forms both a lyrical and lexical shorthand for our stunted relations, abandoned tenets, and an almost forgotten civil society.

#17 The Red Element by Catherine Graham

Spring 2008

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"In her stunning new volume of poems, The Red Element, Catherine Graham distills the whirling ambiguities of memories into gorgeous, mysterious single images, making the short poem triumph again on the Canadian literary landscape. With the dense, new energy of The Red Element, where all the poems form a bravura lyrical sequence, Graham proves herself as one of Canada's premier younger poets."

— Molly Peacock

#16 The Debaucher by Jason Camlot

Spring 2008 

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The Debaucher, Jason Camlot's third collection of poetry, walks an oscillating lyrical tightrope between realms of cosmopolitan sophistication and ribald hilarity.

In these surprising poems high art and low art gather together, sometimes on the battlefield, sometimes at lover's leap. Camlot's poetry always maintains an evocative connection to the tender absurdities of our daily lives. He makes us laugh, nervously, at ourselves.